7.12.2010

giveaway #24

Blog Author who wrote, "Of the colors shown, O'Neal is summery and evocative. However my favorites aren't on the page: Georgia Peach, Father Time, Estuary, Pansy."

Kristen who said, "Today my favorite is Eire, but there are so many lovely ones that it changes!"

&

sacha that commented, "Wow- Maeve is fantastic so are Ciara and Skye- what a chance!!"

Please contact me at yarnonthehouse@gmail.com to claim your prizes.

I am one lucky lady! I just spent part of my Monday afternoon meeting Wendee Shulsen, the artistic and clever yarn dyeing entrepreneur behind the company Hazel Knits. Wendee was nice enough to let me come visit her newly re-decorated studio in Seattle. We had a blast talking about yarn dyeing, knitting, and all the other great things related to fiber goodness. Here's my picture tour of Hazel Knits...

Meet Wendee!

Here she's letting me take some "action" shots of her dyeing some Stitch and Pitch yarn in a colorway named Hometeam Baseball. It's a color that's inspired by our Seattle baseball team the Mariners. Messy work, huh? I told Wendee that I'm surprised she stays so clean!

Wendee has a real knack for color. She said that she loves vibrant, crisp colors and doesn't do muted! She takes the extra time to allow her dyes to truly soak in, and that's why her colors are so bold and vivid.

The whole process looks intense to an outsider such as myself, but Wendee's been doing this since 2007 when she opened her Etsy store. With almost 2000 sales on Etsy and a really great retail website, you know it's gotta be good!

I was honestly expecting to see a studio with big blotches of dye all over, but Wendee is so organized. Every nook and cranny in that studio had a purpose. She even had her dye bottles all lined up neatly on her work station!

This is the shelf where the yarn that has just been drenched with dye is placed to allow it to soak into the fiber. Those bowls were gigantic!!

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the really cool pots! These are used to set the dyes and she also kettle dyes some of her yarn using these pots as well. You'd have to see these in person to understand how large they are.

What is it about spools of yarn that is so alluring? Just like the pots, these suckers were big!

Around the corner from the dyeing station, in a separate closed off room is the drying area. I walked into this room and was mesmerized by all the lively, shimmering hanks of yarn hanging from the ceiling.

Alright... they weren't shimmering, but they were marvelous in all their drying glory! Wendee's colors almost glow from within. Aren't they beautiful?!

Down the hall from where all the dyeing action happens is Wendee's office and packaging area. This room was so adorable! The first thing you notice when you walk in is the cute little samples she has knit up and displayed. These little teeny-tiny baby hats were precious!

Wendee is especially talented (or at least in my opinion) in semi-solid colorways. She calls them Tinted and Layered Solids on her website. When she first started dyeing yarn back in 2007 (after working for a LYS part time), she thought the overall yarn market lacked quality variegated, hand dyed, sock yarn, so she decided to try making some of her own. She still offers a large selection of variegated yarns, but has recently started doing more and more semi-solid tonal colorways.

We had a good chuckle when we were talking about where she gets her inspiration from for the colors she dyes up. She said that she had watched last week's interview with Three Irish Girls and it made her laugh when Sharon was talking about how everyone says their inspiration comes from nature. Wendee loves to hike and she spends most of her free time out in nature, but she said that she gets her inspiration from everywhere as well. Like one of her recent sock club inspirations came from purple and orange popping up everywhere she looked (vitamin bottle, a pen she was using, corn chip bag, etc.). She kept seeing this color combo over and over that she just had this urge to use it for a whole sock club color theme!

This is one of her new base sock yarns. It's a merino 9-ply fingering weight. Really lovely stuff!

Wendee told me that when she first started her yarn dyeing business, her and a good friend went to see the Yarn Harlot at a local event when she was in town and brought along a skein of her new variegated sock yarn as a gift. They had to draw a lottery style ticket to stand in line to meet the Harlot and once they walked up, Wendee was star struck and couldn't speak. Her friend saved the day, told the Harlot about Hazel Knits and Wendee gave her the skein of yarn she had brought along. One day shortly after that, Wendee had gotten up to an inbox full of sales. She'd been Harlotized! The Yarn Harlot herself had blogged about knitting with the Hazel Knits yarn. This is the color...

Hazel Knits also offers these wonderful artisan handcrafted ceramic yarn bowls. Wendee has them made up custom for her shop by Brad Henry Pottery. You can find them for sale on her site.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of her big Keep Calm and Carry On poster. You can also kind of see the neat lanterns reflected in the glass up in the top left corner that she had hanging in her office.

Here's some more artwork she had in her work space.

And, of course I had to ask her what's on her needles at this moment: a sock (which I forgot to ask the pattern of, shame on me) and...

...a beautiful pattern called Pacific Diamond by a local designer named Samantha Roshak who specifically designed this pattern for the Hazel Knits Artisan Sock yarn in a color named Pacific.

Don't think I forgot to ask Wendee what her favorite cocktail or drink is. She answered, "I'm a beer girl!"

Wendee, thank you so much for showing us your creative space. It was a treat to visit your yarn dyeing studio in person. Hazel Knits is sponsoring the chance for TWO lucky followers to win a skein of Artisan Sock yarn in a color of their choice or one of Hazel Knits fabulous kits. Check out the website here to see all the fantastic colors and kits! You can also find Hazel Knits on: Ravelry, Etsy, Twitter, and Facebook.

HAZEL KNITS IS ALSO OFFERING ALL THE WONDERFUL YOTH FOLLOWERS A 10% DISCOUNT THROUGH THE END OF JULY. JUST ENTER COUPON CODE: "YARNONTHEHOUSE" DURING CHECKOUT. THIS DISCOUNT EXCLUDES SOCK CLUB.

I would like you to do the following if you would like to be entered into this week's giveaway:

I loved all the photos of the dyeing process! Someday I might give it a try, but for now I'll live vicariously through others. I love all the colorways, they are so rich and vibrant! But if I had to pick one it would be "Purple Hazel", I just love the combination of purple and green.

I'm a sucker for green and purple so for me...Purple Haze is a winner! Thanks for showcasing Wendee on your blog. I met her two years ago at a presentation for a knitting retreat in Bellingham, WA. She is a great gal and I love sending her yarn to my swap partners that don't have access to her luscious products!

I love, love purple haze. I don't have any yarn like that in my stash. I have not taken to dying any of my own yarn, I just don't have the time to do it. My daughter said she would do some for me after she is done tye dyeing her t-shirts this weekend. What have I got to loose?

In the clover and Blacklight are my favorites, but it is so hard to pick. This was an interesting post. I enjoyed seeing all your pictures and getting a little peek at yarn dying. Thank ypu for introducing me to yet another fabulous yarnie. (I guess I missed the Yarn Harlot intro :) I am one of the few... )

It was really fun to see photos of Wendee's studio and the dyeing process. It's so hard to choose which colorway is my favorite. Right now, I'd love to have "In The Clover." I think it would knit up to be a beautiful shawlette. Thanks for sharing the time you spent, the photos and this giveaway.

I love Hazel Knits! Up until now, I'd have to say my favorite has been Sanguine Peach, but I think that Cherry Fizz may be challenging that position. It reminds me of drinking Cheerwine as a kid in NC. (Cheerwine is very, very fizzy!)

High OcTANG jumped out at me immediately! I love bright, almost-good-enough-to-eat shades of orange like that. I think they brighten up any outfit no matter what the season, and that particular colorway was just lovely.

Love to watch the dye process. My friend used to do handpainted silk scarves. Is there a fixative used at the end of the process or is it heat set? Just curious. I love all the colors but probably wouldn't make socks. I would do a scarf or a stole.

Wow, Ve, another fabulous giveaway!! The dying process is so interesting. :o) Well, it's hard to choose fav colors here, but I've got it narrowed dorn to gerber and chocoberry. Tough call, but I think I will go with chocoberry as a fav.

What a great story about Wendee! I am lucky enough to have Bobbin's Nest Studio in Santa Clara as my LYS, so I know of this lovely, lovely yarn. Wendee's colors always rock my socks (pun!), but Sanguine Peach is simply scrumptious! (Oddly enough, as I looooove me some color, Wheatberry is calling to me...)

Wow, I love this post - it's great getting a peak at how dyers work. Thanks! It's difficult choosing just one colourway, as they're all gorgeous, and I had it come down to a tie: Violetta and Sassafras. I love the subtle shading going on. :)

I enjoyed seeing the photo essay on HazelKnits' dying process and studio space! My only question would be what kind of dyes she uses? My favorite colorways are the Olympic Rainforest and Evergreen. I'm a displaced Oregonian, so it reminded me of my time up camping in the mountains, waking up and canoeing across a snowy lake. . . and summertime at Forest Park!

How could I possibly pick among all of her lovely colors? I love to knit with semi-solids and hers are so beautiful. I think I may have to order one of her blues or maybe a purple - today, before I even find out if I'm the lucky winner. My favorites? Denim Blues, Blueberry, Terrywinkle... and Coveralls - for the sweet story. Thanks for highlighting Hazel Knits!

I'm an orange girl and I loved knitting with my high ocTANG. It's my favorite regularly offered color. I must say however, that her club color Jubilee is the most remarkable shade of red I've seen and tops my list.

I quite enjoyed your photo essay as well. I hope to dabble in dyeing in the future and I found your drying room pictures especially inspirational. Thanks!

I love all of them! High Octang is one of my very favorites though. The orange is so perfectly vivid, not too yellow or red, just orange. Or, to paraphrase Willy Wonka, "And the oranges look like oranges!" Thanks for featuring Wendee's work, it's so neat to get a peek inside her studio.

I really appreciated getting the virtual tour of a dyer's studio, and now I have another source for feeding my color addiction! Again, it was hard to pick (loved 'em all), but finally managed to whittle my choices down to:

So I picked out my favorite color, Sassafras. It looks so warm and comfy. With the subtle changes in the shades of grey, it's like looking into the remnants of a campfire burned low and cooling. Alas it is sold out :-(. No soft and smokey scarf for me. Though I do keep looking at the Ice Cream Sunday and Olympic Rainforest and seeing socks on my sisters' feet.

I must admit to having my eye on Fireberry for some time. I almost bought a skein last year in London but it seemed silly to buy it there & bring it back to the States. I still need to order some though...

I have loved Hazel knits for years but she always seemed to sell out of a color just as I was about to order. I guess they are just that good! I love the seaglass and Shannypants colorways. They are all so pretty it is hard to choose though. I may have to order one of those yarn bowls for a friend.

I think I will have to go with "Blacklight". There are certainly a lot of gorgeous choices, but I think this one is different (in an absolutely good way) from much of what I see, and I think it would be absolutely stunning knit up.

I just learned about YOTH through Ravelry and happening to want to see what Wendee did to display her socks and renovate her studio. It's great to explore and learn more about yarns and what others are doing to promote dyers! Anyway, looking through Hazel Knits, I really liked Theorem Socks Kit. The colorways that struck me are Aurora Borealis, Baroness, and Firewalker. Firewalker is a great color, but the added knowledge that she actually walked the coals twice speaks of her as a person! Thank you!

I am so jealous! I want to be able to dye like she does... not only in color choices for combinations, but in her Semi-solids. That idea is so neat.

Anyway, back to what I'm supposed to be doing.. choosing a favorite! No matter how many times I flipped through her colors and was wowed by all the verigated colors, I just kept getting struck by Shannypants! It's so deep!!